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When natural disasters hit, politics and personality conflicts must be set aside to provide the most immediate and effective care to the citizens. To ensure a coordinated and efficient disaster response, Cleveland County, Oklahoma, Subrecipient Leader Todd Gibson, is a strong advocate of building relationships between community leaders and key decision makers ahead of natural disasters.

“Leadership has to work a lot on the front end to build relationships with key decision makers to facilitate an expedited response,” Gibson says. Below, Gibson provides his advice for who to build relationships with in your community, and how to go about spearheading new, constructive relationships.

Build and maintain relationships early.

• Gibson recommends building relationships with other local leaders, including: elected officials, mayors, and commissioners, in addition your locality’s public works director, fire and police chiefs, and any other community stakeholder who has access to the skills and resources needed to respond to natural disasters.
• It’s also important to have contacts in your local congressman or women’s office; they can help you get what you need from the state and federal government, such as assistance from the National Guard.

Identify who the key decision makers are during a disaster, and bring them to the table. 

• Figure out who is in command of key city and county divisions during disasters. It’s not always the head of the department or the police chief that takes over during a natural disaster situation — it might be a division command or some other chief executive within the city.
• “You need to have a relationship together with those key executives of a community and not get tied up in what particular job title they have,” Gibson notes.

Bring stakeholders together for in-person group settings.

• Gibson recommends that the first group meetings focus on nothing but relationship building, communication and information sharing.
• Once a sense of community is established, hold tabletop training exercises to see how relationships perform when stress is interjected into the group.
• Gibson suggests holding monthly or quarterly meetings.

Sort out and set aside personality conflicts before a disaster strikes.

• Keep the best interests of the citizens your serving at the heart of your disaster planning, response and recovery decision making.

Cleveland County contracted with IBTS as a subrecipient to help the community rebuild after a 2014 tornado event. Read more about how IBTS is helping the community successfully navigate the CDBG-DR process.